The 2013 mayor's race is just starting to take shape. While the burgeoning field is busy staking out positions on the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy and Mayor Bloomberg's push to ban the sale of large sugary drinks, it is possible that a debate over a decidedly more wonky issue - how the city crafts its annual budget - will surface among the candidates.

The Mayor and City Council's “budget dance” focuses largely on child care slots and after-school programs, but should really be about the City’s overly generous contributions to the health insurance of former City employees and their spouses.

First, the Council should focus on structural changes to municipal finances that will make budgeting easier in future years. Second, the Council should phase out the unusual practice of reimbursing retired municipal workers for their Medicare Part B premiums.

New York City generates more than 25 tons of garbage per minute. That's 14 million tons per year, and the city's Department of Sanitation spends $2 billion annually to collect and dispose of about a third of it.

This report makes the case for a significant change in the New York City Department of Sanitation's solid waste disposal practices, a shift from heavy reliance on long-distance exporting to landfills to greater reliance on use of local waste-to-energy facilities.

Across New York, the cost of health benefits for retired government employees is growing so rapidly that it threatens to crowd out funding for essential government services. Rather than lay off police or close libraries, public officials may want to use their discretion to alter retiree health insurance — but some state legislators are trying to take away that discretion.

This report assesses New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation's (HHC) critical role within the health care safety net protecting lower income New Yorkers, and it explores two significant fiscal challenges in the coming years: threats to City-supported revenues and an inadequate gap-closing plan.

The City Council is set to take up a bill to expand the prevailing-wage law to cover building-service workers in buildings and projects that get financial assistance from the city. Whatever the merits of that expansion, we urgently need much greater transparency in how the “prevailing wage” is determined.

The $500 million CityTime settlement announced today is welcome news to New Yorkers. It is important that the recouped funds be used, not for short-term budget relief and restorations, but to help defray the costs of the City’s capital program.